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Steve's Blog
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Graydon Royce writes for the StarTribune:
A bitter lockout that silenced one of the country’s top orchestras for more than 15 months ended Tuesday when musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra approved a contract that will bring them back to the stage in early February.
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The National Assembly of State Arts Agencies sends notice that with funding for the federal government set to expire tonight (January 14), budget leaders in the House of Representatives and Senate announced late on January 13 that they have reached a compromise on legislation that will fund the federal government for the remainder of fiscal year 2014. The bill provides for $1.1 trillion in funding and would reduce the scope of the automatic spending cuts known as the sequester, which remains in effect until FY2021.
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From Randy Kennedy and Steven Yaccino, writing for The New York Times:
National and local philanthropic foundations have committed $330 million toward a deal that would help preserve the Detroit Institute of Arts’ renowned collection by bolstering the city’s employee pension funds, federal mediators involved in the city’s bankruptcy proceedings announced Monday.
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Eileen Cunniffe writes for Nonprofit Quarterly:
In the waning days of 2013, an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer cited examples of performing arts organizations experimenting with curtain times, holding some weeknight performances as early as 6:30 pm instead of the long-accepted standard of 8:00 pm. The reasons given included appealing to younger audiences, who might want to go somewhere else after the show; appealing to older audiences, who might appreciate getting home earlier; and appealing to everyone in between, who might find it easier to hire a babysitter or just to show up for work the next day. One of the early trends from this experimentation is that some midweek performances with earlier curtain times are pulling even with or outpacing once-hot Friday evening ticket sales.
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A post from the Policy Analysis for California Education:
Access to education in visual art, music, theatre, and dance is varied and unequal across public schools in the United States. Yet the extent of this inequality is largely undocumented. In a recent report from the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, the committee concluded that policymakers lack a basic understanding of access to arts education because there is no required data collection of the courses schools offer.
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The National Endowment for the Arts has announced that application guidelines are now available for Art Works and Challenge America Fast-Track at the NEA’s website. These guidelines are for projects anticipated to take place in 2015. The Art Works and Challenge America Fast-Track programs constitute 75 percent of the NEA’s annual direct grantmaking. In order to offer potential applicants the highest level of technical assistance, the NEA has scheduled webinars covering the basics of the Art Works funding category, how to apply to the NEA, how to select work samples, and how to prepare a strong application. After each presentation, there will be time for Q and A with NEA staff.
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Foundation Center has released its annual publication “Key Facts on U.S. foundations.” In a new and more streamlined format, the 2013 edition includes estimates of giving by U.S. foundations in 2012 and it forcasts the direction of giving changes for 2013 based on survey data collected by Foundation Center. The report also documents the overall size of the U.S. foundation community and analyzes the funding priorities of the largest foundations.
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On December 17, Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed Intro 925 into law. This law will require the Department of Education to provide detailed reporting on the provision of state instructional requirements for the arts in city public schools and will not only help inform education policy-makers, but will also provide parents, students and the public with the knowledge to make informed decisions and advocate for resources to be provided for their schools.
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Sarah Kendzior writes for Al Jazeera:
New York and San Francisco, London, Paris and other cities where cost of living has skyrocketed are no longer places where you go to be someone. They are places you live when you are born having arrived. They are, as journalist Simon Kuper puts it, “the vast gated communities where the one percent reproduces itself.”